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22 Feb 2018 5:41:55pm

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In my opinion the root problem is psychological and spiritual. Our travails all arise, I would say, from the total dominance of society by the Right, the likes of the current Federal, Victorian, NSW, Queensland regimes, their masters in the 'business community' and the brainwashers of the entirely Rightwing MSM and 'think-tanks'. Their basic psychology is one of intense misanthropy and xenophobia, based on fear and hatred of others. Add those other familiar traits, narcissistic egomania, lack of empathy, unscrupulousness, mendacity etc, of the psychopath, and it is not a pretty picture. This pathopsychology is expressed in a steadily rising level of social rivalry and competition, rather than co-operation and collaboration. Competition is favoured, not because it produces 'better' results, but because it producers 'winners' (the rich and powerful)who take all, and lots and lots of losers, who suffer increasing inequality and stagnating wages and steadily worsening conditions. The basic antipathy that characterises the Right is expressed in myriad forms. Racism and xenophobia have been assiduously cultivated since the Hindmarsh Island 'secret women's business' conspiracy, which felicitously combined racism with misogyny. The nasty reaction to the Stolen Generations and the 'bucketloads of extinction' of Native Title were other significant outrages. Xenophobia is ever-present on the supremacist Right, particularly as non-Western powers rise and fuel anxiety and fear. Homophobia, misogyny, class hatred, of course, hatred of environmentalists, downward social hatred of the poor and vulnerable (but, never,ever. of those paladins, the rich)all are running rampant, fueled by a menagerie of Rightwing shock-jock hatemongers and the Murdoch apparat. As inequality and social exclusion and impotence grow, violence, fueled by alcohol and frustration, is boiling over.The unprovoked and often crippling or lethal, 'king-hit' is becoming a type of stigma of our brave, new, greedy and pitiless Rightwing social dispensation. When the economic collapse meets the coming, long-planned, reign of social terror under 'austerity', the reaction of those inculcated by years of violent movies, video-games and genocidal foreign aggressions against the 'rag-heads' will not, I fear, be pretty.

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